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[0:00] Heavenly Father, You created the world by Your Word.

[0:13] ! You created the world by Your Word.! You make the dead live by Your Word. Your Son, Jesus Christ, our precious Lord, His incarnate Word.

[0:28] So Lord, we realize that we can't take the study of Your Word too seriously.

[0:40] And it's my heart, my prayer this afternoon that You would equip every single one of my dear brothers and sisters here.

[0:52] That they might cherish Your Word more. That might know how to study Your Word more deeply.

[1:06] To gain greater faith and confidence in the authority, the reliability of Your Word. So to that end, please help us by Your Holy Spirit.

[1:23] Give us minds to ask questions, to understand, and to apply what we're learning. That it will serve these dear brothers and sisters for the rest of their lives.

[1:39] Amen. We depend on You, Lord. I can't do nothing apart from You. So help me. So help me. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may You have it, Jason?

[2:19] You look like you had it for a while. Why don't you go ahead and read it? 2 Timothy 3, verse 16. All scriptures breathed out by God are profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness.

[2:33] The man of God may be complete, and equipped for every career. Can you go ahead and read 15 as well? Yeah. And how from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus?

[2:48] So, this is the most significant text on the authority of Scripture itself and why it's so significant in the life of a believer. And verse 15 gives us one main reason.

[3:01] It's that the sacred writings are able to make us wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. It's not the Bible itself that saves us, right?

[3:12] We don't worship the Bible. We worship Jesus. We worship God. But the Bible is the means that God has appointed through which we come to encounter and meet Jesus.

[3:23] Right? Because we have... No one comes to saving faith from simply examining the historical facts and looking at the death and resurrection of Jesus and then saying, oh, that must be God's way of saving us.

[3:37] You need a theological interpretation of that historical fact. How do you just, from looking at the fact that Jesus died on the cross and was raised from the dead, know that that was for our atonement, that that's for our vindication and justification.

[3:50] You don't know that unless you have an authoritative interpretation of that. And so that's what Scripture provides for us. And that's why Scripture is so important for missions work.

[4:01] Translating work is so important. And that's why even in like areas where there's hardly no gospel access at all and you read stories of missionaries and of how people come to faith in those areas, often they'll see a vision from the Lord telling them where they can get a Bible, where they can meet a Christian, direct them to a Bible.

[4:20] And it's through the Word that God reveals Himself. And so the Scriptures are the ways that God has appointed to make us wise for salvation through faith in Christ.

[4:31] So that's one very, very important reason. And then the second reason is given in the verses 16 to 17. All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.

[4:49] And I think people sometimes, do you do any more seats? You guys good? I think we can, in case more people come, let me just separate this out here.

[5:19] Oh, you guys head down. Get some nice times together. Bye, Ziya. Bye. Sometimes people make the mistake of thinking that inspiration, that the Spirit, it resides with the people who wrote the books permanently rather than the Scripture books themselves, the writings themselves.

[5:47] In a similar way, we think about how, you know, someone's inspired performance. We say, like, the Christian writers were inspired to write these things. Well, of course, the Spirit of God inspired them and helped them to write it.

[5:58] But the end product, the Scriptures, what is written, the graphe, the writings themselves, all Scriptures, are breathed out by God. And what do you guys think that means?

[6:09] I have a question. Yeah, Tony, go ahead. I think I asked it in the first version class. Yeah. I didn't understand. Wait, first what class? The first version class. No, first class, okay. So it says, it says, like, to make you wise to tell a mission, but the preceding, preceding versus from infancy, you have known the Scriptures.

[6:27] So this, the Scripture is before the compilation of the New Testament that he's referring to. Yes. So I guess, like, how can we say that it's the entire current Bible that these are the verses that it's applying to what we have right now?

[6:43] Yeah, yeah. That's a great question. So that's a little bit, I'll talk about it a little bit because it's an important question, but it's a little bit outside the preview of what I was going to talk about.

[6:54] So Tony's question, just so you guys could hear me if you didn't hear him. This was clearly before the completion of the canon, before the New Testament was codified.

[7:05] And so it's, when it says all Scripture, how do we know that it includes the New Testament and not only, not just the Hebrew Old Testament through Scripture, which is a good question. If you turn to 2 Peter, 2 Peter 3, verses 15 to 16.

[7:39] It says, So we have a clear instance here of Apostle Peter referring to the writings of Paul as the Scriptures because he compares it to the other Scriptures because it's showing that he considers them to be authoritative.

[8:18] If you turn to 1 Timothy 5, verse 18. It's in the context of talking about how the church ought to treat elders and those elders who rule well should be considered worthy of double honor, especially those labor and teaching and teaching.

[8:35] And then he cites the Scriptures. He says, For the Scripture says, You shall not muzzle an ox when it treads out the grain.

[8:49] Do you guys know where that comes from? Deuteronomy. Yeah. So that's from the Old Testament Scriptures. But what about the next one? And the laborer deserves his wages.

[9:00] So that comes from Matthew 10.10. So that's actually Jesus' words.

[9:11] The things that Jesus said and taught and probably the tradition of the Gospels circulating at the time. And he's citing that already as Scripture on par with the same authority as the Old Testament Scriptures.

[9:22] Right? And so there's some definitive clues in the Scriptures that tell us that the New Testament is considered authoritative as much as the Old Testament. Does that answer your question someone, Tony?

[9:36] If you have further questions, I think I'll question. I think I'll read it. But I have more questions later. Okay. Okay. That's fine. And that's why it's important to recognize also that it's the New Testament apostles who are in the same authoritative tradition as the Old Testament Scripture writing prophets.

[9:56] It's the apostles who have the authority as Jesus promised and I will bring to remembrance by the Spirit everything that I taught you. And they're the ones recorded reliably for us.

[10:06] And so all of Scripture, I'd say, both Old and New Testament, 66 books of the Bible, 39 in the Old Testament, 27 in the New Testament are inspired by God. Inspired meaning breathed out by God.

[10:18] Meaning God's spoken. And it says that it's able to equip us for every good work. That means it's sufficient for us to be able to become the kind of Christians that God wants us to be.

[10:31] You don't need additional information. You don't need additional books even. That's why I know sometimes we recommend books and we say to people, well, that's a must read.

[10:46] Biblically, there's no must read book except for the Bible. For the Christian truly, there's just the only must read book because everything you need to know is already in here. And that sufficiency is very free.

[10:58] You know, and if there's something that you're wondering in your life about, you have questions about, and you don't really know what God wants you to do, and you search the scriptures diligently and scripture says nothing about it, then there's an area where you can exercise freedom of conscience.

[11:12] If God hasn't told you in scriptures about it, then you don't have to know. And within the wisdom that you derive from God's word, you make the best decision you can. And you just seek to honor the Lord in that.

[11:24] Now, that's where we get the term inspiration of scripture. It's talking about how God's the one who breathed it. He's the one who spoke it. And as people who take the Bible seriously in that way, that God himself spoke these words, we obviously can't tamper with God's word.

[11:39] And we need to make sure that the word that we are studying is the word that God intended to be written, which is why the idea of establishing the text and choosing good translations and knowing that you're working with the right passage is so important.

[11:53] But how do we know that the scriptures authoritate? You guys have any ideas? Because he said it.

[12:06] Because what? He said it. Besides the fact that he said it was authoritative, we know it really is. Yeah, Jesus said it is authoritative, right? And he quotes it as authoritative. Okay, I thought there was another answer.

[12:16] That's the answer? Yeah. No, that's a good answer. That's a good answer. That Jesus said it is good enough for me. But how do we know Jesus said it? Because it's in the Bible.

[12:28] Well, it's in the Bible. So how do we know that what's in the Bible is authoritative? If that's what... That's where Jesus tells us that scripture is authoritative.

[12:39] You guys see what I'm asking? Mm-hmm. You have to believe that someone wrote down that someone did write about Jesus' words accurately. Okay, yeah.

[12:51] So maybe you're saying you need to believe that someone wrote down Jesus' words accurately. Jason, what were you going to say? Are you trying to get at like let the scripture enter the scripture? Yeah, so there's a principle that we call this that the scripture is self-authenticating.

[13:04] And in 1 Thessalonians 2.13 it says, We also thank God constantly for this that when you receive the word of God Oh, do I have something here?

[13:17] Yeah. When you receive the word of God which you heard from us you accepted it not as the word of men but as what it really is the word of God which is at work in you believers.

[13:30] Right? Much like 2 Timothy 3.16 and 17 when Paul simply said all scripture is breathed out by God and these are scriptures there's no proof here that scripture is authoritative.

[13:42] They don't offer that kind of proof. They just take for granted that when God speaks that people will receive those scriptures as God's word and not as the words of men. Right? And if you look at Hebrews 6.13 it says, Since God had no one greater by whom to swear he swore by himself.

[14:02] This is I'm getting at that idea that the Bible is the final authority. It's the ultimate authority. When you're a student in grad school writing a paper then you need to cite your proper authorities.

[14:13] Right? But if you are the authority on the subject you don't cite other people because you're the authority. You speak on it authoritatively. Right? God speaks on his own authority and no one else can establish his authority and so the word of God itself is the final authority and that has to have self-authenticating authority.

[14:32] And this is so important because until you have you could establish that the Bible and the doctrines taught in it is fully credible as the word of God. Until you have know beyond a shadow of doubt that God is the author of these words it's not going to have the full intended effect in the application in our lives.

[14:52] But isn't that circular reasoning? Right? Scripture is God's authoritative word. How do you know that? Well because Scripture says it's God's authoritative word.

[15:03] But why is Scripture authoritative? Well because it's God's word. Right? How do you know that? Because Scripture says so. Right? It's like a circular reasoning. The logic uses its own conclusion as evidence to prove itself which makes it circular.

[15:19] But because our God is triune and this logic isn't viciously circular. And this is where the importance of the Holy Spirit and his testimony comes in. Look at John 10 2-3 and says The sheep hear the shepherd's voice and he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out.

[15:36] The sheep follow him for they know his voice. How do the sheep follow the right voice? God simply says the sheep know his voice. They know how to recognize his voice.

[15:48] 1 Corinthians 2 12-14 says Now we have received not the spirit of the world but the spirit who is from God that we might understand the things freely given us by God and we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the spirit interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual.

[16:06] The natural person does not accept the things of the spirit of God for they are folly to him and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. So it's the spirit of God himself who confirms to us that what is objectively the word of God the written scriptures is God's word.

[16:22] So the trying God is working in intent for the father the father speaks the word he's the one that breathes out the word Jesus is the incarnate word and the spirit is the one who attests to this and confirms this in our hearts and that's why unless the spirit of God removes the veil that's over our hearts and unless the spirit of God shines into our hearts the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ it says in 2 Corinthians 3-4 that we cannot see the glory of Christ we cannot understand it and grasp it.

[16:54] So then there is an objective dimension to the inspiration and the authority of God's word and there is a subjective dimension to it. The objective dimension it is objectively the authoritative word of God the written word but it is subjectively confirmed as truth as God's word by the Holy Spirit in our hearts and this is important both of these things are important because on the one hand the objective dimension that the scripture is objectively God's written word helps us to steer clear of radical individualism and you see that in certain evangelical circles where people say things like well I determine my own truth whatever I say whatever my interpretation whatever my spiritual experience is that's truth that kind of idea that radical individualism is very prevailing in our culture you probably heard things like live your truth speak your truth create your own reality but you can't do that if scripture is God's objective word then we have to submit to it we have to subordinate all our priorities and purposes and desires and thoughts to it on the other hand the subjective dimension helps us to steer clear of what I might call

[18:05] Catholic institutionalism which says that the church determines truth right individual Christians cannot be left to interpret scripture and determine truth for themselves that would render Christianity subjective and so for the sake of certainty and uniformity only the church the institutional church can determine truth but what of the fact that the church itself has erred and misinterpreted scripture throughout history that the popes themselves have done that and 1st John 2 27 says but the anointing that you receive from him abides in you and you have no need that anyone should teach you but as anointing teaches you about everything and is true and is no lie just as it has taught you abide in him right this is a radical teaching that all of us when we are regenerated we have the indwelling spirit who enables us to discern truth who confirms the truth of God into our hearts so we can learn the Christians who are submitted to the objective authority of God's word who are guided by the inward testimony of the

[19:10] Holy Spirit who indwells them are capable of discerning the truth and it's this conviction that makes reformed Protestants like us eager to put this Bible in the hands of every Christian you don't see that kind of same impulse in Catholic circles and you definitely haven't seen that throughout history throughout church history look at all the major Bible labs that you guys have on your phones almost certainly every single one of the ones that are most used they all have Protestant evangelical origin it's because of this reformed Protestant conviction this is not to say the church or those who occupy its teaching office the elders have no authority they do have authority and the church tradition and the creeds do have authority for that reason the creeds of church tradition like the Nicene Creed Apostles Creed Chasedonian Creed these are all important for our history but we call them in Latin norma normata which means they are a rule that is ruled and whereas with scripture we call it norma normins it's a rule that rules so yes creeds church authorities tradition have authority to a certain degree but that authority is always subordinated to the authority of scripture it's a rule that is rule and this is a key distinction because the

[20:38] Catholic church for example claims that they have magisterial authority they claim to be the magisterium and that comes from the Latin word magister which means master meaning that according to them the Catholic church has master like authority to determine this is what scripture means this is what it says everybody who disagrees is wrong they have the magisterium but Protestants would argue that no the church does not have magisterial authority they only have ministerial authority the church is a servant of the word and as an elder as a pastor who occupies the teaching office I am a servant of the word I don't get to give a decisive interpretation that everybody must agree with people contest that like the Bereans in Acts contest that is it actually in accordance with the scriptures and so I have a subordinate a servant like role which is what minister means servant so Lucas did you have a question yeah yeah great question so Lucas's question is about apocrypha books that they have added to what we hold as canon as a

[22:02] Protestant canon how does that work so apocrypha just comes from the Greek word means hidden away it means that the origin of their origin is unknown we don't know who wrote them and that's partly why they're questioned did the apostles or their cultists like Luke and Mark actually write them or not and it's not true that Martin Luther just kind of picked because the canon that we have the 66 books of the Bible actually is the most ancient canon it's the ones that were historically and universally accepted by the historical church and so even if you look at probably the best Catholic biblical scholar in history is Jerome he's the one who single-handedly translated Latin Vulgate from the original languages and in the introduction to the Latin Vulgate Jerome sets apart the apocrypha as not canon and so this is separated from canon if you look at the

[23:13] Jews and the Old Testament writings you look at the way the Dead Sea Scrolls were preserved the scriptures that we hold from the Old Testament are preserved in these ornate fonts in this really secure containments within your compartments whereas the apocrypha are not given that kind of treatment in terms of scroll the Jews clearly made that distinction and the Jews were the ones who to whom God entrusted the stewardship of the Old Testament canon and so the way we have it from the Jews the way we have it throughout church history is what we have to be in 66 books of Bible so I've answered a ask your pastors question on that and I can I'm happy to send you a more detailed answer to that I will if you guys are interested in reading that yeah Tony go ahead yeah yeah we don't know exactly who wrote Hebrews some people say maybe it was Apollo or maybe it's however it was because it was historically accepted the kind of criteria of canonicity that was used in church history maybe by the formulated by

[24:26] Vincent of Lawrence is that it has to have been accepted by all Christians in all places at all times and that's the and this Hebrews can hold that claim better than any of the apocryphal books and the pseudepigrapha is like another category of books that sometimes people study but pseudepigrapha are like known forgeries like they claim to be an author that they are not like book of Enoch claims to be written by Enoch but it's not by Enoch the assumption of Moses right it's like these are not actual canon apocrypha is not canon either but those are even more suspect than the apocrypha yeah go ahead for us is it accurate that all of scripture speaks of each other like the old testament all has a link to the new testament and the new testament all has a link to the old so they are intertwined they are and that's not the case with the mentioned like the scriptures not quoted like the scriptures throughout the new testament there is in jude second pheter there is mention of some random things from the pseudepigrapha but it's not quoted as scripture in the same way

[25:44] Paul quotes Greek philosophers in act 17 it quotes these things sometimes but it's never quoted as scripture whereas the 66 books that we have repeatedly over and over again consistently cited as scripture in the testament so that's another really strong evidence for that I'm just kind of like this is just the intro guys why do we want to study the bible that's why there's no competition to nothing more important than to study than the scriptures for us the text that we have is very authoritative I'll kind of blaze through this because I think I feel like I have a lot of time right now but it always turns out that I don't have enough time there and so I'm just going to anticipate that and then kind of breeze through this where you know I mean how many of you guys have seen Odyssey recently yeah it's a controversial film

[26:47] I know but I'm a classic major how many of you guys have read it yay! so Homer's Odyssey was written in the 8th century BC it's one of the best preserved ancient literature because it was so beloved and so popular and so but even for this best preserved ancient documents there's only about thousand ancient manuscripts of it before the advent of the printing press and then the oldest surviving fragment of it which is only about a paragraph is from the 3rd century BC which is five you know you know which many years hundreds of years removed from the original manuscript this is the earliest full text of the Odyssey is dated to the 10th century AD which is like 1700 years removed from the original manuscript if you compare other ancient manuscripts that we have that people teach this is what

[27:54] Homer wrote this is what Caesar wrote the Gallic War they don't have nearly as many attestations but you contrast that with the scriptures and we have 5801 Greek manuscripts not even that's not even counting the ancient like handwritten manuscript translations there is if you if you count more there's 10,000 Latin manuscripts!

[28:20] 9,300 manuscripts in other languages like Syriac and Coptic a whopping total of 25,000 manuscripts so we have a very very good idea that the scriptures that we have is exactly what was originally written and the earliest Greek manuscript that we have is the Gospel of John and it's dated around 125 80 which is like 50 years removed from its original authorship and so the art or the study of determining which texts are original what should be in the scriptures is called textual criticism and we have benefited from really hard work by many scholars so like a very renowned scholar named F.J.

[29:03] Hort was a textuals critic according to his lifetime research and study he says he concluded that not more than one thousandth part of the whole New Testament is affected by differences of reading like 0.1 percent and the Old Testament though not as well attested New Testament because it's more ancient is better attested than any of the other ancient contemporaries there are about 11,000 Old Testament manuscripts and the mesoretic text is the complete Hebrew Bible that the Jews use which is the basis of our English Bibles and that's dated to the 9th century AD and the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls have you guys seen the Dead Sea Scrolls it's come to the Boston Science!

[29:46] Museum in the past which is amazing Museum of Science you guys should check those things out sometimes we have a wealth of resources available to us living in the city and nowadays online you can even find digital ways you can view the Dead Sea Scrolls and these things have brought the manuscripts date back far as 200 BC confirming once again the accuracy of the mesoretic text we have and showing that the Old Testament A good preservation of what was written and so the fact that the Bible is passed down to us like this is really a historical miracle over so many continents so many authors and so many thousands of years and that's because God intended it that way he's preserved it for us and so many people have tried to stamp out the Bible in history right Roman emperors persecuting Christians trying to burn all the Bible and yet it has survived and thrived now and it's part of the

[30:48] Guinness book world records right five to seven billion copies of the Bible printed and it's really a historical miracle the grass withers the flower fades but the word of our God will stand forever so I want you to really don't take this for granted and as English speakers we have we have an embarrassment of riches!

[31:16] there's like 900 something English translations and no language has had the Bible translated that many times in history we are the beneficiaries of that the Old Testament was written primarily in Hebrew there's some sections of Daniel and Ezra which are written in Aramaic the New Testament is written entirely in Greek and for this reason every English Bible you have is a translation and we're and as I mentioned there's many good translations but for us English speakers perhaps the most important one because of the role it plays in the history of translations is the executed by the

[32:26] Roman Catholic Church the Roman Catholic Church held their services mostly in Latin at the time which most Christians no longer understood at the time they still have Latin services which people understand even less now and the Roman Church violently opposed any attempt to translate the Bible into the common tongue of the people in light of what I talked about earlier magisterial authority versus ministerial authority why do you think they did that why did they not want the Bible translated in the language of the common people yeah they're the ones who have the authority to interpret it rightly everybody else is going to mess it up why entrust the Bible to these people who don't have the God given authority that's it's their theology functioning right and so they're trying to in their own head they think they're preserving and protecting God's word by by killing people who want to put the

[33:27] Bible in the hands of people so that they can be established in the truth of God and so William Tyndale because of this was convicted of heresy and executed strangled to death after his body was burned at the stake as a demonstration to warn similarly minded believers but his translation of the New Testament and the Pentateuch and the OT historical books was finished and it became the first mass produced English Bible it's called the Tyndale Bible it spread like wildfire it became the basis for subsequent English translations of the Bible and people estimate that about 90% of the authorized version the King James version is taken directly from Tyndale translation and given the significant impact of the King James version on the English language many scholars very credibly argue that William Tyndale and not William Shakespeare is the most influential figure in the development of the English language and I agree with them and so let me show you guys a diagram of can you guys see that a little bit it shows kind of the family tree of the various translations here's the

[34:40] Tyndale's New Testament English Bible it's the dotted lines are revisions kind of of those translations and kind of the solid lines are kind of like new translations that are being reworked using some of the basis of that older translation these translations here all come from Tyndale even the revised standard version RSB and from which you get the NASB and ESB they're coming from the KJV which came from Tyndale so you're also reading a lot of what Tyndale wrote when you read the ESB and then this was based on some of the older Greek texts we've discovered a lot more new Greek text ancient manuscripts over time and because of that some of these translations at the top are based on the you run into some

[35:44] King James only folks they're really mistaken because the King James version is an amazing English translation no doubt but it's not based on the largest collection of Hebrew and Greek manuscripts and because of that there are some actual mistakes in it that's not what was actually written and so some of the top translations are what we would use now at the top you see an arrow and on the left it says word for word and on the right it says thought for thought this is the kind of a translational philosophy so the translations that are closer to the left are going to try to preserve the exact Greek word or Hebrew word and convey it so that you get kind of word for word meaning and how right are you know they're they're they're focusing on what we call dynamic equivalence so they're even if the word isn't the exact right word they're just trying to communicate the same sense what the word is here to the ancient author this is what it would mean to the 21st century reader so they kind of try to give you the sense of it and so formal equivalence on the left dynamic equivalence on the right you could say word for word versus thought for thought is easier way to understand that

[37:14] Tony this group here so these are translations based on Jerome's Latin Vulgate yeah so Wycliffe's English translation was based in Latin Vulgate but Latin Vulgate is not based on the original texts it is based on the original text but Latin Vulgate itself is not the original Greek and Hebrew so because these are translations of a translation they're in a separate category as opposed to these translations that are based on the original languages yeah he did it straight from the Greek first English translation yeah amazing and so let me give you an example this is the most literal formal equivalence translation of John 1 14 Young's literal translation and the word became flesh and did tabernacle among us and we beheld his glory glory as of an only begotten of a father full of grace and truth a little bit stilted right because of the formal equivalence of it it's very close to the original text but it actually kind of obscures the meaning for the modern reader right like what does it mean that he tabernacles among us what does it mean he's the only begotten of a father this is the other extreme of complete dynamic equivalence the message translation this is using

[38:49] Peterson's translation almost almost it's basically a paraphrase the word became flesh and blood and moved into the neighborhood we saw the glory with our own eyes the one of a kind glory like father like son generous inside and out true from start to finish it's easy to understand right that's the that's the appeal of a dynamic equivalent translation but it also kind of obscures the original meaning right it's like what do you mean you moved into the neighborhood like it's like a generous insight there's just like a lot of the more you get to the dynamic equivalence side of the spectrum more you're going to get interpretations of the text masquerading as translation right and so that's why when we're preaching we try to use a translation that's more in the formal equivalence category though not all the way like the young literal translation so ESV has and the word became flesh and dwelt among us we've seen his glory the only son from the father and

[39:54] I one of the best examples of a good word for word translation is the NASB NASB or ESV somewhat and one of the best examples of the dynamic equivalence translation the NIV New International Version Lucas you have a question yeah oh yeah um yeah super like specific question but do you ever read CSB yeah CSB is because I read it but I kind of like sneaky read it like by myself is that your guilty pleasure Lucas wow this doesn't make much sense in ESV I'm just gonna switch to CSB I know now that you say that you know I meant to update this graphic but I'll show you as it is and so this is kind of a this is kind of the literal to kind of formal equivalence spectrum and this is is how readable it is so the higher it is the more readable it is understandable for the modern author but the closer it is to that side the more close it reflects the original text and obviously as a translation you're trying to hit that optimal sweet spot somewhere in the middle and guess who made this graphic whoever publishes the csv made this graphic and so this is very very biased and I would argue that csv is not at the exact optimal center I think the ESV is a little closer to that you know and so this is yeah but that's why I wanted to update this and I tried to find a different graphic but I did find a better graphic but I did find a better one but you had to pay for it and I tried to pay for it and then it wouldn't work it's like some random guy who teaches like he's like a youth minister in some church in the middle of nowhere who made this amazing graphic and he wants to charge people but he didn't update the website so I could buy it so anyway so you're trying to find a sweet spot yeah go ahead Tony yeah sure how are these like how did they what was the benchmarking method that's a great question

[42:15] I cannot answer that question I don't know what benchmarks they used I didn't look into their methodology it's probably not up to MIT standards if you're wondering all right any other questions there's some resources here and I do want to take you to a different resource if you do want to learn to use Greek tools for Bible study there's a really helpful book called Greek for the rest of us or if you go to biblical training.org you can also see this resource Greek tools Bible study and I'm going to take you if you have phones and computers if you could go to blueletterbible.org how many of you guys already use this?

[43:02] awesome yes okay how many of you guys have like a more serious paid software? it's like you know it's like a okay Jason you don't have one yet? I do okay what do you use?

[43:14] logos? okay that's great that's the one that Todd and Ed used to I use a cordis which logos was not as developed when I was in seminary I wish I had adopted that but if you can go to blueletterbible.org this is what it looks like Blue Letter Bible just celebrated their 30th anniversary last year and it's hey Ed the Blue Letter Bible is actually not that much older not that much younger than the internet itself it's at the advent of the internet these creators realized the internet doesn't have a lot of good content it doesn't have any Bible in it and so they wanted to put the Bible online and put all the related resources online they could and that's in the public domain and at the time all the hyperlinks were blue because whoever created that liked the color blue and so that's why they called it the Blue Letter Bible and they linked all the different words in the Bible verses to make it you know connected to the various resources so it's an amazing resource look at that there's 38,385 users right now so I'm going to show you guys just how to use some of the basic tools on this if you look go here let's see

[44:31] I'm going to put Genesis 1-1 and here when you're going to the Old Testament you want to select also to see you know what let's just go to ESV for now and then let's search for it and I'll show you from here you go in and you'll see all the Bible verses and then if you hover over this tools do you guys see that?

[44:59] do you guys see it? yeah there are several options great cross references other Bibles commentaries as well that's in the public domain Charles Spurgeon's commentaries in here which is great if you want to access John Calvin's commentary that's also in the public domain free online at CCEL which is what?

[45:16] Christian something ethereal library Christian classics ethereal library CCEL great resource as well if you go to interlinear here it's going to take you to the Westminster Leningrad Codex which is the oldest full Hebrew manuscript we have so obviously unless you studied Hebrew you're not going to know what they are but you can click on them and they'll tell you so you can click on this the Strong's number Strong's number is basically a scholar in 1890 named James Strong did the meticulous work of numbering every unique Greek Hebrew Aramaic word in the original Magical Bible and so every unique word has a number Strong's number which is still widely used so you click on the Strong number and it's going to pull up every single occasion instance where that word is used in the Hebrew Bible in the Old Testament which is very very useful because then you can compare those verses and see how those how that word is used and how it's translated by the various

[46:27] English translators you guys following what I'm saying and we're going to I'm going to have you guys do this so you can get some practice if you have smartphones and stuff they have an app also you could just download and I hear it's very useful one more thing I want to show you is if you're going to go to the there is a way to set it up so that it shows the Hebrew text or Greek text side by side so let's go here to Matthew 1-1 and then parallel right here and then here you click the Greek text which is the morphological Greek New Testament M-G-N-T and you click that and you'll get all the Greek text isn't that cool and then you can click into them and it'll tell you what it means and what form it's in and most you know most of us who've graduated from seminary are relying on these tools anyway because we forget so much and we use them too and so this is a great way for you guys to be able to access that so we're going to practice if you guys can break into groups of maybe four or five maybe would two groups at each table work maybe two groups at each table you guys okay so I'm going to pass these out

[47:47] I'm going to give you guys the Hebrew and Greek text you guys kind of nice chat if you have a pen or pencil this is a great time to bust out the pen or pencil you brought so I've given you guys oh wow does anybody not have a copy you guys have enough in each table you need more here here I've given you guys kind of three different translations of Exodus 21 22 to 25 and this is to show you guys the value of comparing

[48:54] English translations so that you can get at the translational issues that exist underneath them and so they're from the revised standard version new international version and English standard version and for now in your respective groups I want you to not use blue letter Bible yet just compare the English texts and try to observe where are they different and how does that change your interpretation and understanding of that text so just talk about that for the next five to ten minutes and then I'll call you guys back and share all right you guys ready to talk about it what did you guys find out about the virgin or the betrothed yes it could be man or woman yeah well no no partner is no partner is it's almost always woman yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes it's but what what is it what's a better translation betrothed or virgin virgin yeah virgin because betrothed says a little more than what the word means right so to my knowledge

[50:24] Revelation 14 is the only place part of us is used for male virgins he can't use it it's almost always scripture refers to young woman of marriageable age with not yeah and so so it's better to translate as virgin betrothed seems like an over translation now what about if his passions are strong or if he's past her youth how'd you guys what's this blue letter I will say dictionary I can put on there it's tough because there's only one decent word in the bible yeah so like yeah I don't know like where it's really under bible that's yeah interpretation and so Dre is making a good point that this word this Greek word is used only once in the entire bible that's what you call a hot pox legomenah it only occurs once in the entire bible so what context do you use to determine what that means it's hard so you do have to rely some on the dictionary that are using examples not only from the bible but also other

[51:31] Greek literature ancient Greek literature to supply the name so what does the dictionary say it says like plump or overwrite overwrite overwrite right past bloom right and so this is a Greek tool that I used for my classic studies you don't really get taught this in seminary that much it's called it's from Tufts University Perseus.tufts.eu it's called the Greek word study tool and if you put in the Greek word here it will not only give you occurrences in the bible it will also give you occurrences in all extant ancient Greek manuscripts!

[52:13] including you know Medea you know like others you know poems by tragedians and it's so that's very useful and if you do a search on that you find that that the word is used to refer to the so akmas is where we get the word acme means peak puper is where we get the word hyper means beyond beyond peak is what this means so overwrite beyond prime so that word akmas is used to refer to a virgin's peak peak appeal of a virgin that place so if it's beyond that what is it you're past your prime right and so which translation gets that right then then as we get that right it's past her youth right and king james version has a similar similar thing so who's doing what did anybody look up

[53:23] Mary so in verse 38 in Nazmi he says give in marriage but ESPN NIV just says Mary should you guys anybody look that up yeah so how did you how did you decide how did you come to that question yeah the word version yeah so that's fascinating did everybody hear what Emme said okay so she's saying that in the Nazmi it seems to be talking about a father giving away his virgin daughter in marriage giving in marriage rather than a virgin marrying someone that he or she is in betrothed to right and so that's where if you do a blue letter

[54:44] Bible search for the word give in marriage in verse 38 or marry you'll find that the word always means to give in marriage it doesn't mean to marry and so if that's the case then this is talking about the father giving away his virgin daughter in marriage rather than keeping her as a virgin at home and not about a betrothed person engaged person staying unmarried and then decide to marry the virgin does that make sense you guys following this wait who could just say what yeah go ahead isn't that crazy yeah that's a pretty different interpretation isn't it so it's not like should I get married it's like should you get married yeah whether it's the father deciding should I keep her or keep her as a virgin since being singleness can help with being singularly devoted to the Lord as a context we might be better to keep her but then if the father starts feeling bad she's getting past her pride past her youth and start feeling bad about it then he's saying you know what give her away you're not sinning you guys understand what's going on yeah and rather than so in the ESV what does it mean for the betrothed to to keep her as his betrothed not marry her you guys have a category for what do you say they'll just stay they'll just stay they'll just stay they'll just stay betrothed right that's what that means right that doesn't make any sense right so I think the

[56:44]  I think the ESV got that one really wrong even though it's a really really good translation so hopefully you guys can see this with your own tools this is why it's important to look at multiple translations whenever you're reading a Bible it's a good practice to read the same version of the Bible over and over again so you gain singularity but it's also a good exercise to sometimes read the Bible one year in a different translation than you've read before that way you can you can notice some of these discrimencies so thank you for your patience sorry for going this is going long Lord thank you for this time please make this fruitful as they go in their own way in Jesus name we pray Amen Thanks may may may sank sank